Anyhow, I fail to see how providing less information could be of benefit.
Something that would help IMO is a mouseover display of a particular column, such that if the data is truncated, the mouseover would display the full data (name/path whatever it may be).
Now if you mean to truncate what is displayed starting on the left when fitting column width ... perhaps. But even that, I question. Most often, I tend to find the search term in the left-most part of the display rather then being in a truncated right most. Right now, searching for "somet", I come up with mp3's & pdf's & txt's & jpg's & in almost all cases the string "somet" is in the left-most portion the visible field. And that string, I am more concerned with rather then anything that follows.